


Ashia's Heart

by YinNocturne



Category: Demon Cycle - Peter V. Brett
Genre: Bending gender roles, Gen, Set in Krasia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 08:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16719690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YinNocturne/pseuds/YinNocturne
Summary: Ashia was born to die on alagai talons.





	Ashia's Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of unfinished, in that there are more snippets at different ages that I could write, and I may well in future.

“I was born to die on alagai talons.” It was not her first declaration such, but it was the first in front of the cold eyes of the Sharum, the dama and her husband Asome and his pillow friend Asuhafi.

Ashia was five, watching from an alcove as her father, the Shar-Dama-Ka, sent his sons off to Hannu Pash, to the Sharaj at the end of Waning. Already her brothers claimed to bring their father honour in the night, though they would not walk the Maze for years yet. She watched as they bragged of their skill in Sharusakh, of the place at the head of the gruel line. Even Asome, sent to Sharik Hora proffered his own achievements as nie-dama. 

‘They are still nothing - nie - still in their tan bidos of childhood. But at least they are the nothing of warriors. I am the nothing that becomes a pillow dancer. Left to celebrate the Sharum’s glory in the Maze after the dawn, in the bed chamber.’ Ashia frowned at the scene, returning to her duties. She would wake, and slip from the under-palace to the shadowed upper city streets while the Sharum still sought glory in the Maze, but before the dama’ting came to collect the wounded. In these precious hours she would watch. Finding a different vantage each night, as far from the small tunnel into the undercity she crept through the night, as far as she dared to go. Ashia watched the Nanji scamper up their steel shod ladders, the scorpion stingers, the shield wall, the Sharach wielding their netted spears. She watched each tribe at their best and worst, the nights they triumphed, and the nights they staggered back, half their brothers gone to walk the lonely road. She watched for years, and in the day, as she completed her studies they were never far from her mind. 

When she was nine, Ashia finally mastered the sequence Jayan, the Kaji heir had shown off his skill in to their father, and she felt the stirrings of her warrior’s heart. ‘This body was born to die on alagai talons. To bring glory and honour in the maze.’ She looked out into the bright midday sun, the celestial body that blessed all Krasians, and cursed the alagai of Nie’s abyss. With the glare of it in her eyes, on her young face bare of a veil, she first pledged herself. Not knowing the years of lies, of secrets, of walking into the dawn light and embracing the pain as her Sharum brothers returned from the Maze victorious. 


End file.
